


Thing

by mcschnuggles



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Gen, Non-Sexual Age Play, Stuffed Toys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 02:07:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16546757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcschnuggles/pseuds/mcschnuggles
Summary: There are a lot of things that Nathan hates, but the thing he hates the most is how much his dumb stuffed animal calms him down.





	Thing

            Nathan slams the door behind him.

            He drinks in the way that the doorframe rattles. Someone heard that. Someone’s probably annoyed. Good. He’s annoyed too.

            He throws his backpack against his bed. The books bang and clatter, and he scowls at them. He wants to rip out every page, because at least then he’d have something to do, but he still has that little voice in the back of his head. It’s harsh and mean and sounds exactly like his father. It’s telling him that his father won’t replace his textbooks anymore, that he’s already struggling in his photography class because of what he did to that book, and it gives him to pause.

            He sits on the floor beside his bed and brings his knees up to his chest, trying to breathe.

            His hands are shaking as he takes out his phone. He almost can’t select the right app, and he fumbles more than once. He hates his fucking medication so much, hates how much it makes his shake and twitch and tremble.

            Whale sounds echo from his phone speaker, and he tries to focus on breathing, but it’s so hard. His blood is pounding through him, and the only thing his body wants to do is destroy everything he can get his hands on.

            He keeps breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Again and again and again until he stops clenching his fists hard enough to hurt.

            It’s like a storm. At least, that’s what his therapist tells him. He just has to hold out through the worst of it, and soon enough, the bad thoughts and feelings will pass. Just listen to the whale noises. Rock. Breathe. Focus.

            The moment doesn’t come—well, it doesn’t come fast enough, and that only makes things worse. So instead of being frustrated at nothing, he’s frustrated at the fact that he can’t calm down. After all, he’s doing all the tricks, he’s doing everything right, so why can’t his heart stop pounding for two goddamn seconds?

            Just ride it out. Be patient. Focus on your breathing. He knows the steps, but they never make much sense in his head. Most of the time, it doesn’t even work.

            Tenseness bunches up in his shoulders and he looks over at his desk, but he pushes the thought away almost immediately.

            If you can’t calm down, don’t take any extra medication. It’s dangerous and should be a last resort.

            Nathan glowers at his bed, choosing to take his anger out on inanimate objects. He shoves his backpack away and chucks his useless phone across the room.

            He hates himself, hates the fact that he needs this as badly as he does.

            He hates how much he wants it.

            His therapist always says it’s normal, that it’s a “perfectly healthy coping mechanism,” but he doesn’t believe the fucker a bit. If it was normal, he wouldn’t have a panic attack every time he felt the need to regress. If it was normal, he wouldn’t have begged his therapist to keep his regression secret, even from his father, no matter how hard the man pried.

            It’s confidentiality, he knows, but his father has ways of getting information out of his therapist. It’s how he found out about Nathan’s detentions, about his self-harm, about the suicide attempt. The thought of his dad finding out is one of the fears that keeps him up at night.

            He pulls the shoebox out from under his bed. Well, to be more precise, he pulls out the plastic bin, then tears out the blankets, sheets, and papers that fill the top half of the bin. Then he takes out the shoebox inside.

            No one ever comes in his room, aside from Victoria and a couple other kids from the Vortex Club, but he can never be too careful.

            If anyone were to ever find out he’s an age regressor, he was sure he’d never live it down. It’d be like freshman year but twenty times worse.

            He refuses to be that wimpy kid ever again. And if that means going to ridiculous measures to cover up his things, to get a miniature panic attack any time Victoria so much as sits on his bed, then so be it.

            He opens the shoebox, knocking aside the scrap paper he uses to cover it. The papers are the most tedious to rearrange and put aside, but it’s the last layer of defense he has if someone were to snoop into his stuff.

            Max is such a nosy little shit. He wouldn’t be surprised if she went poking into his stuff sometime soon. If it weren’t for all the bastards out to get him on campus, he wouldn’t feel the need to cover things up as badly as he did. But everyone just wanted to see him fall.

            His fingers shake as he touches Thing.

            He hates it most of all. It’s so stupid, so ugly, and he needs it with all his heart.

            Nathan tucks it against his collarbone, rhythmically running his thumb up and down the uneven stitching. It really is ugly, and he really does hate it.

            The stitching is crude, visible all the way up the seams. Parts of the fabric are matted with dried fabric glue. An abundance of stuffing pokes out of every missed stitch. Its head is too big, so it constantly lolls to the side, and its body is no larger than his palm. It stares back at him with differently colored, differently sized button eyes, wrapped in a hundred angry stitches, some red, some purple.

            It’s probably the ugliest thing in the universe, which is why he hates it, which is why he needs it. Victoria made it, and it’s just like him.

            Victoria made the mistake of taking some sewing class last year. She either needed it for a gen ed or a filler class or something. Either way, she took it, she hated it. He thinks she might have passed the class with a C, but he can’t remember much else other than her late-night rants.

            Thing was her final project. She’d been the one to give it its “name.” She exclusively referred to it as “that thing,” so that became its unofficial name between them.

            He’d ask her, “How’s your progress on the thing?” and she’d respond, “I hate that thing more and more every second.”

            Her final project was barely passable. She’d given it to him as a joke, her exact words being, “I never want to see this again and setting it on fire won’t be enough.”

            He wonders how she’d react if she knew how attached he’d gotten to it.

            He hates it so much, hates how Thing almost forces him to be calm, hates how he spent all goddamn day wishing he could be snuggling with Thing instead of being handed back failing test grades and being stared at like a side show freak.

            The attention on him has never been positive, but recently it’s gotten worse. Now he’s not just “Nathan the unstable freak,” but “Nathan the unstable freak that shot a girl and almost went to prison.” He hears the whispers, and he knows they’re right. If it weren’t for his father’s power and his therapist’s insistence, he’d be rotting in a jail cell right now.

            Now it’s like everyone’s waiting for him to mess up again.

            He holds Thing to his face with a grimace. The worst of the storm is over, but that doesn’t mean the skies are clear yet.

            He hates this gross, ratty toy so much, even as he begins to sob into it. The fabric is rough in places, scraping against his cheek, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

            He rocks himself, trying to find solace in the motion. Back. Forth. Back. Forth. If he syncs it with his breathing, he can almost get a hold of himself. Almost.

            At this point, the only thing he wants to do is cuddle Thing to his cheek and crawl into bed for a few hours. He might even lower himself to pulling out the unused chew beads he got off a website months ago.

            But he can’t.

            He has to go.

            He shoves Thing back in his shoebox, pushes the papers on top of it, and stuffs the shoebox back into the bin. He kicks the bin into place under his bed and with a sigh, shoulders his backpack.

            After all, he can’t be late for his next class.

**Author's Note:**

> mcschnuggles.tumblr.com


End file.
